Dick Cheney Iraq 'quagmire' video hits the web

Video footage of the US vice-president Dick Cheney saying that an American invasion of Iraq would lead to a "quagmire" has surfaced on the internet, to the delight of opponents of the war.

You Tube: Cheney's 1994 interview

In a 1994 television interview Mr Cheney, who was defence secretary in the 1990-91 Gulf War, said that it had been right not to seize Baghdad after driving Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait.


US vice-president Dick Cheney
He said: "There would have been a US occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.

"Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off."

The accuracy of his assessment has seized upon by critics of the Bush administration as evidence that the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was both reckless and groundless.

Mr Cheney, then a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute think tank, told the C-Span network that Syria and Iran would get involved in Iraq.

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"It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq," he said. The administration of President George Bush senior had judged that removing Saddam was not worth "many more" American lives than the 146 lost in repelling him from Kuwait, he said.

So far there have been more than 3,700 American military casualties in Iraq since 2003.

Mr Cheney's office denied the interview had caused him any embarrassment. "It was from 1994 and after 9/11 we were dealing with different circumstances," said a spokesman.

The vice-president's defenders have said that everyone is entitled to change their mind as conditions change.

Liberal bloggers poured over the remarks. "We now know that Cheney got it exactly right in 1994. We have no idea why he later decided the invasion and its aftermath would be a cakewalk," wrote Dan Kennedy on Media Nation.

"It's a shame that Cheney's 1994 words couldn't have been thrown in his face in 2002 and '03, before the invasion."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/21/wcheney121.xml